By Nury Vittachi

Monday, 26 August 2013

Planets attack earth airplanes

LANCE CORPORAL SHEMINDERPAL SINGH stood at the window of
Ladakh mountain lookout point 4715 and peered into the darkening sky.

There it
was again. Low on the horizon, a spy ship flying directly into Indian airspace!

By
now, Singh knew The Enemy’s modus operandi. It would hover most of the night
until it was relieved by a second spy plane at about 4 am.

Over six months, he
and fellow officers recorded 329 airspace violations by this pair of drones,
which they were convinced had been sent by China.

Until
earlier this month when astronomer Tushar Prabhu pointed
out that they were actually Jupiter and Saturn. India’s army chief responded: “I don’t care if
they are planets. We’re still going to shoot them down.”

***

No,
actually I made up that last quote, but the rest is true, as reported by the
Telegraph newspaper of Calcutta.

You
can’t blame Lance Corporal Singh. Last year, an Air Canada pilot mistook the
planet Venus for an oncoming aircraft, and dived 180 meters, sending passengers
hurtling to the ceiling, as this column reported. Only after crew assured him that chances of actually
hitting Venus were on the lowish side did he return to his regular flight path.

***

How
do the two categories of item get mixed up, given that planes are small, thin, metal things, while
Jupiter is an astonishing large round ball of gas, think of Oprah Winfrey naked?
(Sorry, don’t mean to put you off your food.)

Readers
pointed me to the writings of UFO debunker Tim Printy, who has recorded many relevant
reports.

***Airmen piloting planes over Japan have reported being “chased” by
planets, Mr Printy says. (Japan being
what it is, this is probably a Nintendo toy.)

***

In
the US state of Georgia in 1967, a pair of police officers were spooked by the
planet Venus following their police car. “It gained on us and was going about
75 mph [120 kph],” one of the officers said. (I did NOT make that quote up.) He
continued: “After the object caught up with us, it pulled into the sky.”

***

I
had no idea planets were so small and their inhabitants could steer them to
earth to have a look-see at what we’re up to. But it makes sense. I remember a
flight I once took over Laos where the pilot swerved so much that he was
probably steering around Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune.

***

A colleague reviewing the cases above by reading over my shoulder just pointed
out that in every case, the witness was a man in uniform.

“They make the
collars too tight; it addles their brains,” she said. “Besides, all men are
idiots.”

(Just to prove her wrong, I was wise enough not to respond to this.) ***

A retired pilot had a possibly
relevant comment. “Some planets are low in the sky, just where aircraft
appear,” he said. “An air traffic controller at Detroit airport once famously
said: ‘Do you know how many times we have cleared Venus to land?’”

One
day, perhaps it will land.

No problem, we can just call out the Indian army to
blow it up. Lance Corporal Sheminderpal Singh has been waiting for a long time
to do just that.

***

***

IN OTHER NEWS

Thanks for the comments on the previous item, about a few of the atheists I know being more dogmatic than any of the non-atheists. It seems to me that I was making an extremely simple point, and one which was easily proven.

Yet the post triggered more than 100 comments on Facebook, many of which were the usual "creationism is bad" rants. All this, of course, somewhat reinforces my point. Of course I particularly value the comments on this website, since they come from a very special gang of people....

There must be a way of making a point such as "religious folk are becoming more tolerant" without being accused of being a creationist, but I'm not sure how to do it...

***

For me, personally, the key question is not "do you believe in God?" but "do you believe in atheists?"

I think dividing the world into atheists and others is not the best way. We all have world views. They range from people who believe in a very personal God, to people who believe in a more general universal consciousness, to people who believe only in material things which can be proven by natural science. Most people's ideas are probably floating in the middle somewhere.

A more relevant question is our tolerance: we're tolerant about our friends' world views, or we are intolerant. Most of us choose tolerance.